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The Futureforth Blog

This is the perfect time of the year to get your LinkedIn profile up to date and looking good. You never know what opportunities you could be missing by having a poor profile. If your goals in 2016 include growing your business, finding a new job, changing careers, or building your professional network, you must ensure your LinkedIn profile is ready for prime time.

The following are five ways to improve your LinkedIn profile.

1. Consider Search Engines and Add Keywords

Recruiters and HR managers don’t review physical resumes anymore. They use online services like LinkedIn to discover candidates. If your profile is missing the keywords and terms they are searching for, you won’t appear in the results.

Photo by Olu Eletu.

Your LinkedIn profile has space for up to 5,000 characters in your summary. Use those characters to ensure you include the keywords and terms recruiters and your customers are searching for.

Side note: Copy and paste bullets and other characters to improve the appearance of your profile from: copypastecharacter.com.

2. Skills / Endorsements

Review the Skills section of your profile. Your skills appear as endorsement suggestions to your connections. If you receive a strange endorsement for something you don’t do, that’s probably because it is listed in your skills.

Keep your skills up to date and remove the ones that no longer apply to your career. Add up to fifty skills.

Side note: Be sure to use your top, most accurate, skills in your profile description.

Bonus points: Review who has endorsed you for your top skills and reach out to them to say hello.

3. Recommendations

Stop begging for recommendations and start writing them. Write a recommendation for the best people you work with. If you are a student, write a recommendation for a guest lecturer, faculty or team project partner.

You will find that the more recommendations you provide, the more they will be reciprocated.

4. Presentations

Upload your best presentations to Slideshare (owned by LinkedIn) and link to them in your profile. The more visual the better. If you need help with designing your presentations, pick up a copy of Garr Reynold’s “Presentation Zen”.

Side note: Be sure your presentation has a call to action at the end of it. Include your contact information.

5. Headshot

LinkedIn profiles with photos get eleven times more views. Use a professional looking photo that shows us who you are. Here are a few photo tips from LinkedIn:

Choose a photo that looks like you.

Make sure your face takes up at least 60% of the frame.

Choose the right expression.

Wear what you’d wear to work.

Choose a background that isn’t distracting.

Side note: Be consistent across social media by using the same photo. This helps visitors recognize you in their timelines and newsfeeds.

These are five quick things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile to get found and network more effectively. Subscribe to my newsletter to be invited to my upcoming, free webinar, The Worst LinkedIn Profile In The World.